HABITS=MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS

HABITS=MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS

Examine what they are pleased to call their free and responsible behaviour, and you are likely to find, not conscious action, but mechanical movement... It is said that when the Great Library of Alexandria was burnt down, only one book survived. It was a very ordinary book, dull and uninteresting so it was sold for a few pennies to a poor man who barely knew how to read. Now that book, dull and uninteresting as it seemed, was probably the most valuable book in the world for on the inside of the back cover were scrawled in large, round letters a few sentences that contained the secret of the Touchstone—a tiny pebble that could turn anything it touched into pure gold. The writing declared that this precious pebble was lying somewhere on the shore of the Black Sea among thousands of other pebbles that were exactly like it, except in this one particular that, whereas all the other pebbles were cold to the touch, this one was warm as if it were alive. The man rejoiced at his good luck. He sold everything he had, borrowed a large sum of money that would last him a year and made for the Black Sea where he set up tent and began the painstaking task of searching for the Touchstone. This was the way he went about it: he would lift a pebble; if it was cold to the touch he would not throw it back on the shore because if he did that, he might be lifting and feeling the same stone dozens of time; no, he would throw it into the sea. So each day for hours on end he persevered in his patient endeavour: lift a pebble, if it felt cold, throw it into the sea; lift another...and so on, endlessly. He spent a week, a month, ten months, a whole year at this task. Then he borrowed some more money and kept at it for another two years. On and on he went: lift a pebble, feel it...it was cold, throw it into the sea. Hour after hour; day after day; week after week...still no Touchstone. One evening he picked up a pebble and it was warm to the touch—and, through sheer force of habit, he threw it into the Black Sea!